Chapter 18
When they mounted the bikes after lunch, Tuesday hoped she never got used to the roar of over forty motorcycles thundering to life and then riding with grace around curves in a long, swaying line.
Choreography on powerful machines was a completely different kind of dance, the engine sounds dropping and rising with the terrain and the curves, moving around the canyon’s rim like a single living, breathing organism.
She couldn’t describe how it felt to be part of it, but it made her soul want to soar, and wolves don’t usually want to take to the air.
She’d seen it in Willow, back on Edward’s point — Tuesday wanting to be a few feet from the edge while Willow had her toes over the edge, wanting to lean into the vastness and soar over it.
She pressed her cheek against Knife’s shoulder and watched the canyon as they drove around the rim, the bike leaning one way and then another, and was happy everything in her life had brought her to this perfect moment in time.
Eventually, they made it to an actual restaurant, and Tuesday ordered fried pickles, corn nuggets, jalapeno poppers, fried green tomatoes, onion rings, fried squash, chicken livers, and hamburger steak with peppers and onions.
When they asked her if she wanted cornbread or biscuits, she had to think about it a moment before deciding on cornbread.
The hotel was an old U-shaped motor court, and the owner came outside to greet them with a handful of keys he handed to Brain.
“Welcome! I’m glad you all made it safe.
Everything should be in order, but let us know if you need anything.
It’s good to see all of you again, and we appreciate that you choose us every year. ”
“They have fifty-two units, and we only have thirty-five of them,” Brain told the group. “The pool is all ours after nine o’clock, but we’re sharing with other guests until then, so watch the language if there are kids.”
“Everyone, apparently, doesn’t raise their kids with the theory that if they never hear the bad words, how do they know what they aren’t supposed to say?” Duke noted, and everyone chuckled.
The room was nicer than Tuesday expected. Small, but the bathrooms had clearly been renovated in recent years, and the rooms smelled fresh and not musty, as she’d expected.
Knife, of course, needed to christen the room by taking her from behind when she undressed to put her bathing suit on, and he finished with a few strikes of his belt.
When she eventually made it out to the pool, she found the other ol’ladies had already set up a makeshift bar area in the grass just off the concrete, since management didn’t want glass on the concrete areas, which made sense.
She’d put a cover-up on and hoped the belt marks would fade before she decided to swim, but she wasn’t terribly self-conscious about them.
The whole damned club — except for Gen, Harmony, and Tippy — seemed to be kinky as fuck, so any judgment would be of the ‘wow, lucky girl’ variety, rather than the OMG kind.
Two families were hanging out near the shallow end though, so she’d need to make sure she didn’t turn her back to them once the cover-up was off.
Later, while they were sitting near Harmony and Brain, Tuesday told him,
“I wanted to thank you again — for Atlanta, and then both LA and San Francisco.”
Pack wolves can travel most places because there are mutual agreements between packs.
But lone wolves need to gain permission from the pack alpha of a city before visiting.
Dozer had talked to Marco for her, to ask him to help her with New York since he’d been Master Vampire of New York before coming to Chattanooga to rule the entire Southeastern US, but gaining admission to the other cities she most often traveled to had been a problem.
She’d worried she might have to give up those clients until Brain had stepped in to help.
“The Atlanta alpha is an asshole,” Brain said. “But he responds to the right pressure points.”
“Again, thank you. Also, I’m not sure how you know so many Master Vampires, but it’s good you knew the ones over both LA and San Fran.”
Vampires rule all, and when they’d told the alphas to give her safe passage, they’d done so.
One of the vampires wanted her to cook a meal for his lion-shifter partner when she was in town, and that was fine.
The other offered to send a plane to get her when she came, if she would load it with 100 pounds of the RTMC’s organic steaks, a combination of ribeyes and sirloins, for him to feed his flock.
“I’m working on Italy as a whole, since I have clients in several cities,” she told him. “Paris is never going to happen, but that’s okay. I’ve kept more cities than I expected to, and I have you to thank for it. You really went above and beyond.”
“You’re one of us now. It’s what we do. If one of us needs help with a food or cooking thing, you’ll jump in. It wasn’t a big deal for me to help you navigate the supernatural politics, and I’m glad I could help.”
The motel’s management knew what they were doing, putting the other guests as far from the pool area as possible. Everyone else was out of the pool before eight, so they had it all to themselves before expected.
Shortly after dark, when the lights inside the pool made everything above and around it seem a little dreamy, she was completely chilled, listening to Matty actively narrate a near-crash at his last race when Knife stood up.
The pool went quiet around her, and her wolf took notice. Something was up.
Knife offered his hand to her, she took it, and he pulled her to standing. Duke walked to him with a box, and her heart nearly stopped beating when Knife pulled a vest from it. Was this it? Was he really going to finally put a vest on her?
The entire pool area went totally silent while he held it for her to see the front, then the back. PROPERTY OF KNIFE circling a version of the Rolling Thunder emblem.
Her throat closed, and she wasn’t sure she could get the words out. Her eyes watered and she blinked them, determined not to cry. Her heart stopped for an instant, then felt as if it was trying to beat its way out of her chest.
Her knees threatened to stop holding her up, and a hot rush of emotion flooded her chest — relief so sharp it hurt, joy so big it made her dizzy at the sight of the black leather vest with gorgeous embroidery in Knife’s hands.
She hadn’t understood. Not until this moment, standing at the edge of a glowing pool in Alabama with over a hundred people watching while the man she loved held up a vest with her name on the front and his on the back.
The weight of it hit her all at once: the public claim, the protection, the belonging.
The way it said to every person here that she was his, and he was hers.
She’d wanted to belong, but she’d had no idea the gravity of this moment until she was drowning in the emotions of it.
Her pack bonds were long gone, and she’d made her peace with that, or she’d thought she had, many times over — on the mountain in North Carolina running under the full moon, riding with the club, hanging out in the clubhouse, playing paintball games in the woods at the back of the property.
She looked at the women around her, wearing their vests.
Harmony, who’d handed her a Long Island tea on her first night and said we are going to be really good friends like it was already decided.
Angelica, who’d grown up in this world and shared it without being asked.
Lexi, Daisy, Matty. Hailey, who’d ridden in the back bedroom of the RV with the blinds pulled, so Ghost could ride with his brothers and still have her around that evening.
Not a pack. These people didn’t share bonds forged with blood and oaths to an alpha, but with oaths to each other.
A democratic group instead of one led by a totalitarian dictator.
And it’s true Kenny had been a benevolent dictator, but still, there is no other way to describe an alpha’s powers, and these men had chosen not to be subject to one.
And now she was part of this little group of rebel shapeshifters.
She met Knife’s gaze, and she didn’t trust her voice, but she did the best she could manage. “Will you please put it on me?” Her voice was barely steady, but it came out enough to be understood.
He held the vest open for her, she slid her arms through, and the weight of it settled onto her shoulders. She breathed in the leather smell, and his fingers brushed down her back, smoothing it down like he was sealing a promise into place.
Property of Knife. In that moment, she felt the claim in her bones.
Her throat tightened. Her eyes burned. For the first time since she’d left her pack, she didn’t feel untethered. She felt anchored.
The crowd erupted and snapped her out of her internal emotional overload — boots stomping concrete, hands slamming tables, wild whoops and cheers rolling across the water like thunder.
She laughed through the tears threatening to spill, twirled once to show off the vest, the weight of it settling on her shoulders like it’d always belonged there.
With emotions engulfing her, she threw her arms around Knife and buried her face in his neck, breathing him in, heart so full it hurt.
But that wasn’t enough for him.
He leaned her backward, a strong arm locked around her waist, and claimed her mouth in a kiss that wiped out the entire world.
It wasn’t gentle. It was fierce and deep, and threatened to devour her.
The kind of kiss that said mine with every stroke of his tongue, every press of his lips, every tight grip of his hand in her hair.
She tasted the beer he’d been drinking and felt the rumble of his growl against her chest. Their auras brushed, then slammed together, locking so tightly she swore she could feel his heartbeat inside her own ribs.